Tag Archives: U.S.

By Yara Bayoumy, Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey proposed on Friday staging a joint deployment with U.S. troops in Syria, as the two NATO allies sought to rescue a rapidly deteriorating strategic relationship that Washington acknowledged had reached a “crisis point”. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met President Tayyip Erdogan during a two-day visit that followed weeks of escalating anti-American rhetoric from the Turkish government. Relations between Washington and its main Muslim ally in NATO have been strained to the breaking point by several issues, above all Turkey’s anger over U.S. support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey sees as terrorists.

The United States on Thursday publicly blamed Russia for carrying out the so-called NotPetya cyber attack last year that crippled government and business computers in Ukraine before spreading around the world. The statement by the White House came hours after the British government attributed the attack to Russia, a conclusion already reached and made public by many private sector cyber security experts. The attack in June of 2017 “spread worldwide, causing billions of dollars in damage across Europe, Asia and the Americas,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

(Reuters) – Adults who get a flu shot are 36 percent less likely to get the disease, while for children the figure was an unexpectedly high 59 percent, U.S. health officials said on Thursday, predicting that the current “intense” season could continue for weeks. Anyone not already immunized should get a flu shot despite the lateness of the season, because “some protection is better than none,” one of the officials told a news briefing. A total of 63 children in the United States have died of influenza this season, and three-quarters of them did not get a vaccine, said Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Russian who offered stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons and compromising information on President Donald Trump bilked U.S. spies out of $ 100,000 last year, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing U.S. and European security officials. The money was delivered to a Berlin hotel room in September and was intended as the first installment of a $ 1 million reward, according to U.S. officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by the Times, the newspaper reported. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd denied the story on Saturday, saying,” “The fictional story that CIA was bilked out of $ 100,000 is patently false.” The theft of the secret hacking tools was very damaging to the NSA, which was trying to determine exactly what was missing, the Times said.

U.S. aircraft carried out rare, retaliatory strikes in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province on Wednesday against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after they attacked U.S.-backed fighters’ headquarters there, U.S. officials said. No U.S. troops embedded with the local fighters at their headquarters were believed to have been wounded or killed in the attack, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State described the attack on the headquarters as “unprovoked,” but offered little information in its terse statement confirming the attack.